PHILOCURIOUS

 A CHETANA - FPE FIRST PERSON EXPERIENCE 

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There are several reasons why NDEs are not considered mere dreams or hallucinations:

1.Consistency: Many people report similar experiences regardless of their cultural or religious background, suggesting a common underlying phenomenon.

2.Clarity: NDEs are often described as more vivid and real than anything experienced before, unlike the distorted and surreal nature of dreams and hallucinations.

3.Veridical perception: Some NDErs report verifiable perceptions during their experience that they could not have known about through normal sensory channels.

4.Transcendence of time and space: NDEs often involve a sense of timelessness and a feeling of being outside the physical body, which is not typical of dreams or hallucinations.

5.Transformational impact: NDEs can have a profound and lasting impact on a person's life, making them less afraid of death, more compassionate, or more spiritual.

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An article published by The New York Times dated December 8th, 1903

9 days later the Wright Brothers had their first flight.

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Is it possible that everything we’ve been told is a lie?

JM 

This question was asked by Rene Descartes in Meditations on First Philosophy in 1641.

I know. Philosophy. Boring.

If you read this book, I promise you won’t be bored.

He asked:

What if an evil genius cast a spell on us so everything we experience is a lie?

Under the influence of this spell, everyone we encounter is part of the ruse and everything they tell us is crap.

Every book we pick up - even mechanics or scripture - is full of absolute nonsense.

Mechanical and scriptural truth exists somewhere outside our enchantment, but we can’t access it.

Even our body isn’t our body.

Sure, we probably have a real body somewhere, but the spell has convinced us our body has an appearance and sensations it doesn’t have.

What, in this nightmare, is real?

Is there any truth that can’t be taken away?

Descartes said if there is one, this must be the basis for all other knowledge.

Every other form of knowledge can be removed or distorted by the sorcerer’s spell.

All logical reasoning must start with a truth that can’t be removed, whether by sorcery, perceptual illusion, hallucination, or dreaming.

He said there’s a truth that meets this criterion:

Cogito, ergo sum.

(I think, therefore I am.)

He didn’t mean the content of our thinking is true.

Thoughts reflect and analyze what we see and hear, so the content of our thoughts would be dead wrong.

We could even be wrong about the fact that we’re personally thinking.

The sorcerer might be projecting his megaphone-voice in our head.

But the fact that we are having a subjective experience is real.

If we didn’t exist, there would be no one for the sorcerer to fool.

Even the fact that we can be deluded must mean we’re real.

So yes, it’s possible everything we’ve been told is a lie.

If we dream we’re on planet Wqoptu and attend a lecture on Wqoptuan history, everything we hear isn’t true.

Whether our experience points to real, objective facts or not, nobody can tell us we’re not conscious or we don’t exist.

(They’d require our existence and consciousness to tell us!)

This is now the starting point of all logical and scientific arguments.

They must acknowledge we can be fooled, even by our senses.

The understanding that sensory experience, which feels very real, isn’t acceptable proof, arose from the “Cartesian turn” in philosophy.

Scientific experiments and mathematical reasoning cannot rely on what “seems true” by cursory examination.

This also challenges the idea that scripture contains truth literally like a shoebox contains shoes.

We’ve all had dreams in which we read books.

What if this is a dream, and the statements in this book are nonsense?

The dream-book describes events in Wqoptu, and we have no external context to remember that Jesus was from Nazareth.

No problem!

We can still distinguish truth from falsity by our direct apperception of what the fundamental reality of existence and consciousness is and logically implies.

It does imply love and equality.

But we must evaluate the objects of the world by our own-most fundamental reality.

We evaluate their truth by the criteria of our own reality, not the other way around.

We can’t derive truth from objects, because their “truth” is always - at least technically - provisional.

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Attachments and DESIRES are the TWO that we have to OVERCOME, so that we do not have to keep coming back here. Even Christ said, “Him that OVERCOMETH shall make a pillar in the temple of my god and he shall go no more out” Rev. 3.12. Anyway, who really wants to keep rebrthing here? All we have is 1. Traumatic Birth 2. Ignorant Childhood 3. Youth full of Folly. 4. Middle age regrets and struggle 5. Old age filled with sickness and finally when just some lucky ones are beginning to ENJOY life comes - 6. Death

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Rising Pressure

The people around you generally  appear sane and in control of their lives. But put any of them in stressful circumstances, with the pressure rising, and you will see a different reality. The cool mask of self-control comes off. They suddenly lash out in anger, reveal a paranoid streak, and become hypersensitive and often petty. 

Under stress or any threat, the most primitive parts of the brain are aroused and engaged, overwhelming people’s reasoning powers. In fact, stress or tension can reveal flaws in people that they have carefully concealed from view. It is often wise to observe people in such moments, precisely as a way to judge their true character.

Whenever you notice rising pressure and stress levels in your life, you must watch yourself carefully. Monitor any signs of unusual brittleness or sensitivity, sudden suspicions, fears disproportionate to the circumstances. Observe with as much detachment as possible, finding time and space to be alone. You need perspective. Never imagine that you are someone who can withstand rising stress without emotional leakage. It is not possible. But through self-awareness and reflection you can prevent yourself from making decisions you will come to regret.

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WAKING UP

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fallacy of the first cause

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When someone new is hanging out with you and your friends, call your friends by their names so the new person has a chance to memorize them.

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🌿स तु दीर्घकाल नैरन्तर्य सत्काराअदराअसेवितो दृढभूमिः ॥१४॥

Success can definitely be achieved via continuous practice over an extended period of time, carried out in a serious [devoted] and thoughtful manner.

~Patanjali Yoga Sutras, 1.14

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1826 - first ever photograph- France 

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Water can have three existing forms at the same time! It is also termed the 'triple point'. It is the only temperature at which water can exist in all three states that are solid, liquid and gas. The temperature should be exactly 0.01°C.

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"Some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next."

-- Gilda Radner

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Intervulnerability: “Psychotherapist Miriam Greenspan uses the term intervulnerability to describe the need for this mutually held space. When asked about this idea in an interview, she replied, When I say we are “intervulnerable,” I mean we suffer together, whether consciously or unconsciously. Albert Einstein called the idea of a separate self an “optical delusion of consciousness.” Martin Luther King Jr. said that we are all connected in an “inescapable web of mutuality.” There’s no way out, though we try to escape by armoring ourselves against pain and in the process diminishing our lives and our consciousness. But in our intervulnerability is our salvation, because awareness of the mutuality of suffering impels us to search for ways to heal the whole, rather than encase ourselves in a bubble of denial and impossible individualism. At this point in history, it seems that we will either destroy ourselves or find a way to build a sustainable life together.”

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